Another competing vendor here might be Aerospike (formerly Citrus Leaf), but that's a NoSQL database that's used mostly in the online advertising world. Eevery vendor with in-memory technology inevitabaly mentions SAP Hana, but I don't see these vendors going after the same sorts of customers.

I think memSQL has some huge advantages that will be realized over time...

1. mySQL wire compatibility: every developer and their mother knows how to deal with mySQL, and every platform out there has pre-written libraries to interact with mySQL. It cuts out a huge amount of friction of adoption (you don't need to hire new people and you don't need to rewrite your code)

2. In-Memory is Insufficient: What is truly remarkable about running a query on memSQL is running it the 2nd time. While the in-memory component offers a truly remarkable speed improvement, there is something amazing about watching the query run a second time with the optimized query code in place. Nearly every query drops down to milliseconds.

Most IT teams have their conventional databases covered in terms of security and business continuity. But as we enter the era of big data, Hadoop, and NoSQL, protection schemes need to evolve. In fact, big data could drive the next big security strategy shift.

Why should big data be more difficult to secure? In a word, variety. But the business won’t wait to use it to predict customer behavior, find correlations across disparate data sources, predict fraud or financial risk, and more.